Falls The Shadow: Sirius
by AlexandraLeaving
Summary: SLASH and CHARACTER DEATH - Sirius's world is ending...


Falls the Shadow: Sirius 

**By Oscura**

Warning – contains slash.

**Disclaimer – the characters do not belong to me and I make no profit from writing this. The poem was written by T. S. Eliot, rights belong to his estate.**

Author's Note – I have very much enjoyed reading several stories featuring extracts from "The Hollow Men", this piece (part of a series) is not intended to infringe on their territory, merely to offer my take on certain people's worlds ending.

_This is the way the world ends_

_This is the way the world ends_

_This is the way the world ends_

_Not with a bang but a whimper_

Sirius has never been very tactful over laughter. (In fact, Sirius has never been very tactful over anything; he exudes a sort of arrogant, febrile grace, and tact has no place in the shifting, changeable spectrum of his emotions.) Sirius has a marked tendency to laugh at entirely the wrong moment: when the Sorting Hat shouted "Gryffindor" (after an unprecedented seven minutes and forty-eight seconds on his head), and the disgust and the horror slid over his cousins' faces in a moment; when a dark-haired Hufflepuff fourth year kissed him at the Halloween Feast – he was only a second year (an uncomfortably wet first kiss, and their teeth banged together; her damp pale hand seeking his); frequently he laughs when being told off, to the fury of his teachers. James, naturally, is enchanted by this.

When James says that he loves Sirius, Sirius laughs, but James only laughs too, even louder, and captures Sirius's mouth (the mouth of a god, the golden mouth of Apollo, the white mouth of a Renaissance statue – James calls it these things. Avant-garde mouth, a translation, Rimbaud. "I fed that famished mouth my ambergris" – a different mouth, that one) in a kiss, slowly, so nobody feels awkward; this time Sirius is not embarrassed by his laughter.

Sirius discovers Anne Rice and is strongly, passionately drawn to vampire culture; the angst, the glamour, the red tears and anguish of love-but-no-sex.  He falls in love with the Vampire Lestat, partly because Lestat is a blonde broken angel with all of Sirius's own arrogance (Sirius is recognising a kindred spirit here), and also because Lestat appears to suffer the same affliction exactly: unnatural, uncontrollable, inappropriate inevitable laughter.

*          *          *

It is the comforting, more than anything, that makes Sirius drift off into grief. The first ten minutes in the blackened wasteland of Godric's Hollow are incredulous: James is unmarked, Sirius, desperate, calls his name but he does not awaken. Sirius and James have been slightly strained together the past year or so: however many reassurances James offers, Sirius finds the prophecy a little too convenient. But now – James is the only person that Sirius has ever been able to really love, for nine years the constant, and now? Sirius's thought processes are fractured, disjointed – he has always been proud of his mind but now he can't control it, can't join up the strands coherently. When Hagrid arrives, there are tears on Sirius's face, and he clings to James's hand, it is pressed to his chest, right against his own heart (is he trying to give back some of the life that has passed away? He is almost indecently alive, his flesh shivers like a jeer – shivers. There is something called Shiva which some muggles do after a death, Sirius thinks it involves tearing at clothes, ashes and screaming, he isn't sure – all that is too much of life), but other than that, he is perfectly still.

Hagrid holds Sirius in huge round-muscled arms, Sirius is crying, in front of Hagrid, a despised part of his brain screams at him to stop, think of his pride (without James, what is there for him to be proud of?); he wrenches himself away, walks in the dark (what's the use of a motorbike without James to ride with him, a simple, compelling synthesis of their two bodies?), comes to the outskirts of London in the small hours, the grey hours, by which time anger – _fury_ – is his dominating emotion.

*          *          *

Sirius is dumbfounded and shivering, exhausted, sickened. Sirius was the _star_ of the Marauders, Sirius used to stay up all night planning ever-more-complex and delightful pranks and still get Outstanding in every test and essay (Sirius never really had to work), Sirius was beautiful, Sirius had a delicate, lilting voice, Sirius _shone_ – now Sirius is white with fatigue, Sirius has been defeated by his own brilliance, his own innovation, Sirius is betrayed, Sirius is alone, and Sirius is laughing. 

I would be delighted to receive a review if you enjoyed the story… 


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